Euripides biography summary of 10

Andromache shows the conflicts that arise when a man has two wives or lovers and simultaneously attacks the Spartans. Ion is a case of mistaken identity and questionable evidence leading to an uncommonly happy ending. The Trojan Women shows the human cost of war, especially for non-combatant women and children. Electra is a new take on a traditional story of Greek tragedy.

Instead of portraying Orestes and Electra as noble avengers, Euripides shows the matricide as what it is, a horrible act that is the product of corrupt characters. Iphigenia among The Taurians shows Orestes and Iphigenia attempting to outsmart one god, Artemis, to fulfill the wishes of another god, Apollo. Their characters are often motivated by strong passions and intense emotions.

Euripides often used the plot device known as "deus ex machina," where a god arrives near the conclusion of the play to settle scores and provide a resolution to the plot.

Euripides biography summary of 10

Euripides' work is also notable for its strong, complex female characters; the women in his tragedies can be victims but also avengers. For example, in Medea, the title character takes revenge on her unfaithful husband by murdering their children as well as his lover. Another play, Hecuba, tells the story of the former queen of Troy, especially her grief over her children's deaths and the retaliation she takes against her son's murderers.

Some of Euripides' works contained indirect commentary on current events. For example, The Trojan Women, which portrayed the human cost of war, was written during the Pelopennesian War B. Though his plays sometimes suffer from weak structure and wandering focus, he was the most innovative of the tragedians and reshaped the formal structure of Greek tragedy by focusing on strong female characters and an intelligent serving class.

Because of this focus on psychological motives, some have called Euripides the father of the modern psychological tragedy. In Alcestis, for example, he takes a story of a wife's goodness and transforms it into an indictment of her husband, and, by extension, an indictment of the patriarchal values that the old legend promoted. His Orestes can be seen as a brilliant anti-tragedy, a work that questions the aesthetic assumptions of Greek drama.

In this work, he includes the happy conclusion of his original mythic source but leaves us knowing that the characters are undeserving of this happiness. Although, only nineteen of them are kept until today. In his dramas gods are losing their leading roles, gain some imperfections and lose the spotless images. Euripides equalizes them with humans, entering monologs in his dramas and uses the common language without adding irrelevant figures and descriptions.

He is also being considered as a founder of psychological drama. Some of the researchers tell about his huge post-mortem popularity, although he hasn't been very popular during his lifetime among the public of Athens.